Carrier Pigeon faster than ADSL

It's what I've always suspected was true of broadband in New Zealand; it's faster to transmit information by carrier pigeon than by ADSL. This article from BusinessDay in South Africa reports on a trial where a carrier pigeon carried 4GB of data over 70km in a pinch under 2 hours 7 minutes, during which time only 5% of the 4GB was downloaded over a Telekom ADSL connection.

New Flat, New Flatmate

I moved into my new flat last week. It's right in the centre of Fitzroy with all the associated cafes and restaurants (there's a pub right across the road). It's a three-and-a-bit bedroom apartment, which I share with three others, in an old chocolate factory. And today we got a new flatmate:



He's a 12 week old Burmese called Chocolate.





Here he is meeting Mette for the first time.

Alpha Queen

Not nearly as good as Epic. No where near as hoppy either, despite the, (I thought), rather grandiose, claims about how many hops were used. The balance of the hops didn't seem quite right either --- not enough bitterness to balance the fruity flavours, and even they were seemed a bit, well, thin, I suppose. Not that I'm saying it was a bad beer, and full credit to the people who brewed it; or rather, arranged its brewing, but at $20AUD for a six pack, I don't know if I'll be buying it too frequently. At least not while there are other new beers out there to try.

Glass blowing at Abbotsford Convent

A few photos of the glass blowing that was going at the Abbotsford Convent last Saturday.

09-08 Glass Blowing

Flatmates

Some of my flatmates at the moment.





This weekend I went to the museum with them, and to Bundoora park where one can see lizards and kangaroos (amongst other things).

Artistic cycling follow-up

Following on from the video about artistic cycling, here's the French team. They spent all their money on their hair-dos and couldn't afford the train ticket to the competition and had to do their routine in a paddock.

Cats and Dogs

A quiz: what's this man doing?



I'll give you a clue.



Give up yet? Here's the answer.



I'm not really the biggest fan of team sports --- I barely know the difference between a cricket post and a a rugby bat, but on Friday I went along to the Australian Rules Football game between the Gellong Cats



and the Western Bulldogs.



I should have done some reading on Wikipedia first because after watching the first quarter of the game things made as much sense as Farnarkling.

Even when you don't know what's going on, the game is fun to watch; which, I guess, is why over 46,000 people turned up to see a game between two teams, neither of whom will probably reach the final, in a sport that is played in half of Australia and nowhere else in the world.



The game moves very quickly, almost like basketball or netball, without all the business of men rolling around in the mud holding each other that seems to be the main feature of rugby.



The referees also help with the watch-ability of the game when they do things like this:









Even without a pie,



I enjoyed the game much more than I expected and can happily say that it's the most entertaining of the many versions of grown men chasing an inflated pigs bladder.



Go Cats!

09-08 Cats and Dogs

Artistic cycling

I came across this video on the excellent bikesnobnyc blog. It's too impressive not to share.

'Roo photos

I mentioned in my previous post that there are kangaroos on campus, here at La Trobe. Afterwards, a cry went up (three exclamation marks in one line of text counts as a cry by my standards) for some photos of them. So, Sunday morning, I took my life, and my camera into my own hands, ignoring newspaper reports of viscous kangaroo attacks, and went for a walk in the wildlife reserve that forms part of university.



These two were enjoying their breakfast, not far from the entrance to the park.



They didn't seem too aggressive, but then again, they could have just been waiting for me to get closer before they pounced.



One of the groups was clearly trying to trap me by using a cute younger kangaroo in the bushes, to lure me closer so that they could get behind me and block my escape.



They needed to use the youngest possible kangaroo, since adult kangaroos are quite ugly looking.





Though they are fun to watch when they move.



I was surprised to find that kangaroos are not originally Australian. In fact, I'm pretty sure that they originated in France. I have two pieces of evidence towards this claim, though both are based on a particular well known frenchman.

Firstly, and this isn't unique to frenchmen, I know, kangaroos are fundamentally lazy.



The second piece of evidence, however, is far more conclusive, as Bethany will attest.



More kangaroo photos from the morning on my Picasa page:

09-08 Kangaroos

Kangaroos!

First day of work today, at my new job in a new city and new country. There is a wildlife reserve attached to the campus here. I went for a walk after lunch and saw kangaroos. It adds some novelty to any job when you can do that!

The bike ride between work and C & N's place, where I'm staying or the moment, isn't too bad. I haven't measured how long it is yet; or timed how long it takes me. It's probably not the most direct route between there and the campus but is keeps me off main roads (3+3 lanes of traffic at 80km/hr) as much as possible. There's no real change in altitude between the start and finish but the road is undulating for most of the way going up and down enough to make me realise how unfit I've become in the last month or two. I don't know if there are any hills about where I can do some stair sprints but I need to start doing some sort of exercise. I'm planning to try a find a place to live closer to town --- about 13km from campus. At least cycling that every day should give me some exercise.

Oh, and Australian drivers seem nuts. Why are they all in such a hurry?